Harold Searles
Encyclopedia
Harold F. Searles, M.D. is one of the pioneers of psychiatric
medicine specialising in psychoanalytic
treatments of schizophrenia
. Harold Searles has the reputation of being a therapeutic virtuoso with difficult and borderline patients; and of being 'not only a great analyst but also a sagacious observer and a creative and careful theoretician'. Searles still holds the Freudian line that homosexuality is an abnormal behavior. He considers transsexuality to be an abnormal behavior.
. He attended Cornell University
and Harvard Medical School
before joining the US armed services in World War II
. After the war he continued his psychiatric training at the Menninger Clinic
in Kansas
then moved to Washington Metropolitan Area
. In 1949 he started work at the luxurious private mental hospital Chestnut Lodge
, Maryland
where he stayed for the next fifteen years. His colleagues included Frieda Fromm-Reichmann
, to whom 'he acknowledged a deep personal debt...[and] whose treatment philosophy he studied at Chestnut Lodge'.
Searles and his wife Sylvia, retired to Davis, California
. They have two sons and a daughter. Their daughter is actress Sandra Dickinson
.
'. Since then 'Jungian analysts have become increasingly interested in...Searles', with attempts made to 'integrate the work of Jung
, Searles, and Langs'. He has also been linked to 'Donald W. Winnicott
, and Hans W. Loewald...[as] major psychoanalytic writers [who] have paid more attention to the role of the external environment than has usually been the case'.
A related line of thought appeared in what has been called 'a very good paper "The Patient as Therapist to his Analyst", [where] Harold Searles (1975) says that in everyone there is a need to heal'. Introducing the concept of the patient's 'unconscious therapeutic initiative' - a precursor of much later thinking on patient/analyst interaction - 'Searles (1975) suggests that human beings have an innate therapeutic impulse towards their fellows, and that psychological illness is related to a disturbance of this therapeutic striving'. Searles's implication is that 'if the analyst is really going to help his patient, he must be able to experience the patient as really...doing something therapeutic for him'.
In his 1978-9 article, "Concerning Transference and Countertransference", Searles continued exploring intersubjectivity, building around the way 'It appears that all patients...have the ability to "read the unconscious" of the therapist'. Searles emphasises that 'we do our patients a disservice if we cannot acknowledge to ourselves the objective grain of truth around which the transference is built'.
, '"the question has been not how but whether to relate to his fellow man....in us too this has been, all along, a meaningful and alive and continuing conflict, heretofore hidden from ourselves" '. This may be linked to Searles' 'debt to Martin Buber
' in formulating what he described 'as mature relatedness; there is a deep sense of relatedness here but there is no merging, no loss of ego-boundaries'.
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
medicine specialising in psychoanalytic
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
treatments of schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. Harold Searles has the reputation of being a therapeutic virtuoso with difficult and borderline patients; and of being 'not only a great analyst but also a sagacious observer and a creative and careful theoretician'. Searles still holds the Freudian line that homosexuality is an abnormal behavior. He considers transsexuality to be an abnormal behavior.
Life
Searles was born in upstate New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. He attended Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
and Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
before joining the US armed services in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. After the war he continued his psychiatric training at the Menninger Clinic
Menninger Foundation
The Menninger Foundation was founded in 1919 by the Menninger family in Topeka, Kansas, and consists of a clinic, a sanatorium, and a school of psychiatry, all of which bear the Menninger name. In 2003, the Menninger Clinic moved to Houston. The foundation was started by Drs. Karl, Will, and...
in Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
then moved to Washington Metropolitan Area
Washington Metropolitan Area
The Washington Metropolitan Area is the metropolitan area centered on Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The area includes all of the federal district and parts of the U.S...
. In 1949 he started work at the luxurious private mental hospital Chestnut Lodge
Chestnut Lodge
Chestnut Lodge was a historic building in Rockville, Maryland, United States, well known as a psychiatric institution. It was a contributing property to the West Montgomery Avenue Historic District.-History:...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
where he stayed for the next fifteen years. His colleagues included Frieda Fromm-Reichmann
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann was a German psychiatrist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud who emigrated to America during World War II.-Life and work:...
, to whom 'he acknowledged a deep personal debt...[and] whose treatment philosophy he studied at Chestnut Lodge'.
Searles and his wife Sylvia, retired to Davis, California
Davis, California
Davis is a city in Yolo County, California, United States. It is part of the Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville Metropolitan Statistical Area...
. They have two sons and a daughter. Their daughter is actress Sandra Dickinson
Sandra Dickinson
Sandra Dickinson is an American-British actress. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She has often played a dumb blonde with a high-pitched voice in the UK – notably commencing in the St...
.
Influence
'Harold Searles's work has...suffered from an odd kind of isolation in the analytic community, at least until the 1980s...perhaps due to his radical approach to countertransferenceCountertransference
Countertransferenceis defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client—or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client.-Early formulations:...
'. Since then 'Jungian analysts have become increasingly interested in...Searles', with attempts made to 'integrate the work of Jung
Jung
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.Jung may also refer to:* Jung * JUNG, Java Universal Network/Graph Framework-See also:...
, Searles, and Langs'. He has also been linked to 'Donald W. Winnicott
Donald Winnicott
Donald Woods Winnicott was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory. He was a leading member of the British Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and a close associate of Marion Milner...
, and Hans W. Loewald...[as] major psychoanalytic writers [who] have paid more attention to the role of the external environment than has usually been the case'.
On countertransference: some significant texts
Searles has been called 'perhaps the most significant early investigator of the usefulness of countertransference and the use of the self in psychotherapy'. In what was termed 'his audacious paper "Oedipal Love in the Countertransference" ', Searles is said to have 'confessed that he not only fell in love with all his patients in the last stages of their analyses...but thought it a good idea to let them know how he felt'. His thinking would appear to have been that 'The patient's self-esteem benefits greatly from his sensing that he (or she) is capable of arousing such responses in his analyst'; and his work might here be seen as a forerunner of the way the later 'intersubjective view...implies a greater involvement of the therapist in terms of spontaneity and countertransference'.A related line of thought appeared in what has been called 'a very good paper "The Patient as Therapist to his Analyst", [where] Harold Searles (1975) says that in everyone there is a need to heal'. Introducing the concept of the patient's 'unconscious therapeutic initiative' - a precursor of much later thinking on patient/analyst interaction - 'Searles (1975) suggests that human beings have an innate therapeutic impulse towards their fellows, and that psychological illness is related to a disturbance of this therapeutic striving'. Searles's implication is that 'if the analyst is really going to help his patient, he must be able to experience the patient as really...doing something therapeutic for him'.
In his 1978-9 article, "Concerning Transference and Countertransference", Searles continued exploring intersubjectivity, building around the way 'It appears that all patients...have the ability to "read the unconscious" of the therapist'. Searles emphasises that 'we do our patients a disservice if we cannot acknowledge to ourselves the objective grain of truth around which the transference is built'.
On relatedness
' "To the schizophrenic individual"', the psychoanalyst Harold Searles writes in his work Countertransference(1979), as cited by Adam PhillipsAdam Phillips (psychologist)
Adam Phillips is a British child psychotherapist, literary critic and essayist. He is known for his books dealing with topics related to psychoanalysis...
, '"the question has been not how but whether to relate to his fellow man....in us too this has been, all along, a meaningful and alive and continuing conflict, heretofore hidden from ourselves" '. This may be linked to Searles' 'debt to Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
' in formulating what he described 'as mature relatedness; there is a deep sense of relatedness here but there is no merging, no loss of ego-boundaries'.
On psychic survival
'While Harold Searles did say that a good analyst has to endure, to survive the [patient's] attacks, he did also say it was important for the analyst to survive the wish to kill the patient'.On "The Effort to Drive the Other Person Crazy"
In his 1959 article "The Effort to Drive the Other Person Crazy", as cited by R. D. Laing, Searles examined six modes of interpersonal communication, of which 'each of these techniques tends to undermine the other person's confidence in his own emotional reactions and his own perception of reality'. One instance he examined was how parental seduction can 'be seen as productive of a conflict in the child between...his desire to mature and fulfil his own individuality, and...his regressive desire to remain in an infantile symbiosis with his parent, to remain there at the cost of investing even his sexual strivings, which constitute his trump card in the game of self-realization, in that regressive relationship'.Further reading
- Searles, Harold F.. Countertransference and related subjects; selected papers., Publisher New York, International Universities Press, 1979, ISBN 0823610853
- Searles, Harold F.: Collected papers on schizophrenia and related subjects, Imprint New York, International Universities Press, 1965, ISBN 0823609804
- Searles, Harold F: My Work With BorderlineBorderlineBorderline or border line may refer to:*Border-In film:*Borderline , a film starring Paul Robeson*Borderline , a film noir starring Fred MacMurray*Borderline , a film starring Charles Bronson...
Patients, Publisher: Jason Aronson, 1994, ISBN 1568214014 - Searles, Harold F.: The Nonhuman Environment in Normal Development and in Schizophrenia (New York, 1960)